At the beginning of this
month I found myself asking what exactly was I doing on a year long mission
trip. Why was I here living out of a bag in the 100+ degree heat sweaty and
stinky all the time? One morning God directed me to Ephesians 4:1-3
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I
urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble
and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort
to keep the unity of the Spirit
through the bond of peace.
Ephesians 4:1-3 (NIV)
I found myself stuck on
the word WORTHY. I
looked up other passages with this word in them and still got nowhere. I was
sitting in a coffee shop with one of my teammates. After a while of pondering,
I finally went and got my teammates Bible to see if it had any other word in
place of worthy. I was out of luck. Once returning home I looked at the message
version of this passage:
In light of all this, here’s what I
want you to do. While I’m locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you
to get out there and walk-better yet, run!-on the road God called you to
travel. I don’t want any of you sitting around on
your hands. I don’t want anyone
strolling off,
down some path that goes
nowhere. And
mark that you do this with humility
and
discipline not in fits and starts, but
steadily, pouring yourselves out
for each other in acts of love,
alert at noticing differences
and quick at mending fences.
Ephesians 4:1-3
Suddenly it all made a
little more sense to me. God has given each of us a calling and He wants us to
live a life that represents that calling. I was still pondering why God had
given me that passage and the next day I was led to Psalm 39.
“Show me, O LORD, my life’s end
and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made
my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath. Man is
a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He
bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not
knowing who will get it. “But now, Lord, what
do I look for? My hope is in you. Save me from all my
transgressions; do not make me the scorn of
fools. Psalm 39:1-4
Alright God, you
want me to lead a life worthy of the calling you have placed on my life and now your telling me my
days are numbered. I spent that day thinking about how these verses related to
each other and mentioned it to a fellow squadmate who in passing mentioned
Hebrews 12:1
Therefore, since we are surrounded
by
such a great cloud of witnesses,
let us throw off everything that
hinders and the sin that so
easily entangles, and let us
run with perseverance
the race marked out for us.
Hebrews 12:1
CLICK.
It all clicked for me at that point. God has called
me to this mission trip for this year. He has given me all the provisions
needed and I have already completed 4 months of this year. I only have 7 months
left. I have been too caught up in myself and too worried about the face that I
put up to my team and squad. I don’t want to crash and burn in front of them.
But all of these verses made it so much more clear. God has called me here, and
I only have so much time on this race and I need to let myself be more
vulnerable because God has put people around me to pick me up when I fall but I
have to get out there and run the race and pursue the calling God has called me
to or else I am wasting what God has so graciously given me.
